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Dienstag, 15. März 2016

Sexual harassment at work

Sexual
harassment at work, unfortunately, is still omnipresent. And even if one might
think that growing emancipation as well as the sensitization of the society for
sexual harassment might have contributed to a reduction of sexual assaults at
work, it doesn’t seem like it. According to an EU-level study “Working
conditions in the European Union“, there is evidence that violence at work is
even to rise.

It is for
this reason that the job search engine JOBswype polled its users in all ten
countries in which JOBswype is operating if they have ever experienced sexual
harassment at work. The three possible answers suggested were “never”, “rarely”
or “frequently”. The results are mostly homogenous and it is pleasing to see
that in all participating countries the percentage of people who have never
been sexually harassed is more than 60%.

It is also striking
that the figures of the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) are
notably similar whereas the same can be said about the figures of the states of
the former Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic and Slovakia). Rumania is the
country, where the largest number of employees have never been sexually
harassed (80%). 18% of the Rumanians answered “rarely” and only 2% answered
“frequently”. The United Kingdom as well as Poland are, in contrast, the two
countries, where employees seem to be experiencing sexual harassment at work
most often – or at least those two countries, where employees have the courage
to state it most often. The figures in both countries represent 21%. But it
must be indicated that polls concerning a critical subject like this should be
handled with caution since victims of sexual harassment often feel ashamed or
don’t dare to talk about such an experience for other reasons. The country with
the second largest percentage of people who have never been sexually harassed
is Slovenia with 77%, followed by the Czech Republic (75%), Austria (72%),
Ireland (71%), Switzerland, Germany and Poland with 67% each and Hungary (64%).
The country where sexual harassment at
work seems to be the case more often is the United Kingdom with only 62% who
have never been sexually harassed and 21% who experience sexual harassment
frequently.

These numbers – even though in some countries more than in others –
are still too high and it is clearly unacceptable that employees are being
harassed at work by their own colleagues or supervisors. A reduction of sexual
harassment at work could be achieved by raising the awareness of that issue in
enterprises all over the world, by teaching employees in how to react and how
to handle sexual harassment as well as by providing psychological support for
victims.